


Lantern Waste

by rosefox



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Letters, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-07
Updated: 2007-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:59:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/pseuds/rosefox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edmund reflects on the early years of their reign in Narnia, and tries to write a letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lantern Waste

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lady Sarai

 

 

Edmund picked up his pen, and then put it down again.

Idly, he rubbed a fingertip over a scratch in the top of the desk. It was a lovely old piece, well-worn mahogany with deep drawers (the key long since gone missing) and the occasional carved curlicue to liven its square, serviceable shape. There were countless scratches, which he always seemed to be too busy to polish. Each one told a story, he thought, but the stories themselves were long since forgotten, never to be regained.

He picked up his pen again. The ink had dried. He dipped it in the bottle and began to write, quickly, before his wandering thoughts could interrupt him again:

> Peter,
> 
> Do you remember

He stared at the page for a while. Eventually he put the pen back down. Of course Peter would remember. They all remembered. How could you forget Narnia? Sometimes it seemed as though his memories were more real than the everyday world of exams and train timetables and socks that needed darning; though now that he thought about it, the occasional sock was likely darned in Narnia. They had never darned their own socks there, of course. Well, perhaps Lucy had. It was the sort of thing she would do.

At any rate, it wasn't memories he wanted to share with Peter, but rather his thoughts about those memories. Try as he might, he could see no graceful way to raise the topic.

It wasn't as though Peter would be displeased, or would ignore him. Peter always listened now, one of the things he had learned in his years as High King. He listened gravely and sympathetically, and then he went off and did what he had been planning to do anyway, but at least you felt that you had been noticed. Edmund supposed that was better than it had been before. Peter never listened before, except to Father, and Edmund had very rarely felt noticed by anyone.

A memory of the scent of snow and spices flashed through his mind. He pushed it aside and picked up his pen.

> Peter,
> 
> Do you remember the time you

No, that was too confrontational. He screwed the page into a ball and tossed it into the corner. The room was littered with similar debris: trinkets, odd shoes, schoolbooks for classes long since completed. There were a great many other balls of paper. He had been trying his hand at poetry lately, without success.

He glanced at his watch. Really, he ought to be packing his bags and getting ready for a farewell supper with George and Reggie before catching the last train to London. He ought to be putting away the paper, capping the bottle of ink, and leaving the memories of Narnia for another day.

He was still holding the pen. How many times had he sat at his desk in his study at Cair Paravel, pen in hand, blank sheet of paper before him? A much less elegant desk, that one, and entirely unlike the elaborately carved furniture that filled the other rooms of the castle. The Beavers had built it (and, he suspected, gnawed it) from beautiful pale birch and made him a gift of it on the fifth anniversary of their coronations. Edmund treasured it beyond any of his other possessions. The Beavers had more reason to despise him than anyone except his sisters and brother, after all, yet they had presented it to him with whiskery faces beaming and flat tails slapping happily against the polished floor of the Great Hall. "A token of the great esteem in which we hold Your Majesty," was all Mr. Beaver said, and, Edmund thought, all he needed to say. He wondered what had happened to that desk.

Was it beginning to snow? He peered out the window. It was dark already, though barely five o'clock.

Those first five years had been the hardest, but it wasn't until he had the desk that he thought to start writing about it, and then it was impossible for him to write anything beyond the most terse account of the facts. "Attempted to explain plumbing to the Moles." Or, "Ceremony today to pick the first apples from the orchard." Or, "Peter gone three weeks now fighting giants on the border." He could never find a way to describe Susan's panic when she realized they were in for years--or a lifetime, they thought then--without hot running water, or the Fauns bringing them several barrels of a particularly strong cider that sent Lucy into fits of giggling, or how peaceful it was when Peter was away as long as they remembered not to talk about how worried they were that he wouldn't come back.

Edmund half expected Lucy to come in and pluck the pen from his fingers, to be Queen Lucy just come home from hunting and still in riding clothes that carried the scent of woods and horse and happiness. He missed her terribly, though he would never embarrass them both by admitting it. She was distant from him now, distant from all of them, struggling with the turbulence of adolescence. Somehow having lived it once didn't make it any easier the second time.

Outside, the lamps were coming on. He stared out at them, watching the light glimmer in the snow, remembering his first sight of Lantern Waste and the sinking feeling of knowing he had been wrong and Lucy had been right, remembering how that feeling had eclipsed the magic of it all. It seemed to him sometimes that all the years in Narnia had been like that. Everyone else thought it was a grand adventure, and all he could see were the things that went wrong, the things he more often than not could do nothing about; or rather, the things he had not dared to try to do anything about. It was easy to be Edmund the Just when mediating a grazing rights dispute among the Horses or sharing out supplies from the castle's stores when winter lasted longer than the Centaurs had predicted. It was hard when Peter got that flinty look, or Susan stamped her foot, or Lucy brightly changed the subject of conversation.

Edmund the Just didn't pick fights or bring up uncomfortable topics. Edmund the Just kept the peace. Edmund the Just was always horribly certain that he had forfeited his right to hold a contrary opinion, and that his penance had not yet been paid.

All those years of holding back seemed to hit him at once with an unbearable weariness. He wanted to shout, or weep, or pound on the desk with his fist. Instead, he picked up his pen, and dipped it in the ink, and pulled over a fresh sheet of paper. Slowly at first and then more quickly, he began to write.

> Do you remember, Peter,  
>  The year of the warmest spring  
>  When the lamp-post budded?  
>  It was Mr. Tumnus who told us,  
>  His quick voice high with excitement,  
>  His hair tousled from his run through the woods.
> 
> Susan said, "We should go look,"  
>  So of course we made a party of it.  
>  It seemed half the castle came with us.  
>  The Moles were eager to study the strange new flower.  
>  The Dwarves brought their knowledge of metals  
>  And their sharp axes shining in the sun.
> 
> "Let us cut the new limb off  
>  And plant it," they said.  
>  "Hold," you told them, your deep voice solemn.  
>  "Dare we take an axe  
>  To the namesake of Lantern Waste,  
>  Our faithful guide so long ago?"
> 
> We picnicked on apples and cold venison  
>  Among the flowers and the Fauns.  
>  A Squirrel stole Lucy's favourite hat  
>  And would not give it back for anything.  
>  The lantern showed the way back to Paravel,  
>  Standing tall and bright in solitary beauty.
> 
> Last week, I took a long walk through town.  
>  In a snowy park, rows of lamp-posts stretched away,  
>  Beckoning me towards the winter horizon.  
>  I thought with regret as I had thought then:  
>  We should have wielded those axes;  
>  We should have planted that limb.
> 
> Were you afraid of disturbing the peace  
>  That we had so carefully wrought?  
>  Would newcomers have thrown it all into disarray?  
>  What would we have thought, on our high thrones,  
>  Of four frightened children who sought a haven,  
>  Or forty, or four hundred?
> 
> You were always full of right answers,  
>  Our noble High King, Peter the Magnificent,  
>  But in this you were wrong.  
>  If we ever go back,  
>  I will seek out the lamp-post in the heart of spring,  
>  And plant an orchard of light.

Edmund put the pen down and carefully blotted the page. When it was quite dry, he folded it in thirds and tucked it into the outer pocket of his knapsack. Perhaps he would give it to Peter, sometime after Christmas but before the start of the term. Perhaps he would keep it, or burn it. What mattered was that he had written it at all.

Perhaps he didn't have to be Edmund the Just all the time anymore. Perhaps sometimes it was all right to be just Edmund.

 


End file.
